


An Apparently Pointless Outrage

by Bluewolf458



Category: The Sentinel (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-07
Updated: 2018-11-07
Packaged: 2019-08-20 08:32:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,614
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16552427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bluewolf458/pseuds/Bluewolf458
Summary: A school has been blown up in the middle of the night





	An Apparently Pointless Outrage

**Author's Note:**

> The start of this story was a Sentinel Thursday prompt - big bang'. The first 1933 words takes the story to the end of the segment posted to SenTh in August 2015.

An Apparently Pointless Outrage

by Bluewolf

The explosion that destroyed Cascade High School was timed for the middle of the night, when the building was empty. However, it resulted in the total destruction of the school. When the police arrived, firemen were already swarming all over the rubble, but there was no sign that anything was likely to burn. A fair number of civilians - presumably people who lived nearby - were gathered along the line of the fence that surrounded the school, blatantly rubbernecking.

"Explosion?" Joel Taggart growled as he tried to inspect the damage from as close as the fire department allowed them to go. "I'd say there were at least ten devices all set to explode at the same time, probably more. Whoever did this meant the building to be completely destroyed. It'll cost millions to clear the debris and rebuild."

Jim Ellison looked at the Principal, who was accompanying the police as - from a distance - they stared at the ruins in the half light of dawn, roughly an hour after the explosion. "And you didn't get any warning that this was going to happen? No threats of any kind?"

"No." John Wyatt still had a stunned look on his face.

"That's odd, though," Joel said. "Usually the perps give some sort of warning, even one that's very ambiguously worded. But in any case... who would want to target a school?"

"Someone whose kid had been failing, who blamed the school and the teaching rather than Junior's laziness - or even his basic lack of brains - and who had the money to hire someone to do it?" Blair suggested.

"Seems a bit far-fetched." "Wouldn't you call that overkill?" Wyatt's comment and Jim's came at the same moment.

Blair looked at Wyatt. "Haven't you ever been visited by a parent who blamed the school for his kid's bad results?"

"Too often," Wyatt said, "and sometimes there's nothing you can say to convince them that their child is lazy and hadn't done the necessary work. But to go to this length?"

"It would be overkill," Jim repeated, "but unfortunately some people are like that. They believe that they have the right to do anything they want, and take it personally if they're stopped. Patrol cops are often risking their lives when they stop a speeding driver - there are some idiots on the road who seem to genuinely believe that speed limits don't apply to them - their car is capable of reaching 150 mph so of course they should be allowed to drive that fast, and they object quite vehemently when they're told they're speeding."

"Blair's right - odds are that if a parent was responsible, he employed someone to do the job," Joel said. "This - " he waved a hand towards the ruins - "says 'professional' to me."

"A professional who hasn't done much of this kind of thing in the past, at least not around here." Jim shook his head. "Even the Switchman - Sarris blew up a few places, killed eight people in the process and injured over twenty, but her bombs were minor compared to this."

"There's no chance she could have escaped and - well - picked up where she left off?" Blair asked.

"I'd doubt it, though we can soon find out," Jim said. "But she never tried to avoid killing people - whoever did this, blowing the building up during the night, didn't want to kill anyone. As if his target was the building and nothing but the building. Sarris wanted deaths, and making bombs with the potential to cause more deaths was escalating."

"But she was mentally unstable," Blair said.

"And she wanted to die - to rejoin her father. I liked the man - he was a good soldier - but I can't help wondering if he was a good father? 'You let him die, you left me alone,' she said. Yes, by all means love people, grieve when you lose them, but it's not healthy to be as devoted to someone as she was to him, to the point where she couldn't accept that he died in the line of duty and there was nothing anyone could have done to save him. Was she his 'little princess' who could do no wrong? Spoiled by Daddy until she believed he was the only person who cared for her?"

"And it never occurred to her that by causing the deaths of other people she could be leaving someone else in the position she was in?" Blair asked.

"That, too, would have been my fault - in her mind," Jim said. With an effort he dragged his thoughts away from the past. "We'll need to check that she's still in Conover, but seriously? This doesn't feel like her work." He moved away, crossing to Captain Fenton, who had taken over the bomb squad after Joel decided to move away from it, to end up in Major Crime. "What do you think, Captain?" Not that he didn't trust Joel's assessment, but it was only tactful to give Fenton his place - although even Fenton hadn't been allowed too close by the fire department.

"Joel's right." Fenton had overheard the ex-bomb squad captain's remarks. "As far as I can tell from this distance there had to have been at least ten separate bombs, minimum, all set where they'd do the maximum amount of damage. This joker knew where the major internal load-bearing walls were. Destroy the base of them and gravity would take care of the rest. I'll be able to tell you more when the fire department lets us get closer."

"Uh-oh," Blair muttered, drawing Jim's attention. Jim immediately realized what Blair had seen. A television van was pulling up at the gateway to the school. Behind it were several other vehicles.

"Reporters," Blair muttered.

The two men from the TV van paused at the gate, clearly filming the rubble and the activity around it from there, although the pictures would be dim in this half-light; the reporters scattered along the line of onlookers.

"Damn!" Jim muttered. He'd hoped to speak to the gawkers, to look for... not witnesses, because anyone living in the vicinity had probably been asleep, but anyone who did live close, see if any of them had seen anything odd the previous evening. Reporters' questions might well put 'memories' into their heads that hadn't been there before.

Leaving Fenton and Joel to continue examining the site as best they could from the distance and Wyatt still shaking his head in disbelief, he headed towards the fence, angling his approach so that he would be as far as possible from the reporters. Blair followed him.

It soon became clear that nobody had noticed anything unusual the previous evening, and everyone had been awakened by the explosion. One man said he had initially thought it was thunder, tried to go back to sleep, and had only been alerted to the fact that it was something more when he heard the emergency vehicles arriving.

When they did track down the woman who had called 911, all she could tell them was that she had been awakened by a big bang "that shook everything". Unlike the man who thought it was thunder and simply rolled over in bed because it wasn't time to get up, she had gone to the window, wanting to see - if possible - what caused it, and realized that the school building that should have been there, silhouetted against the sky, wasn't. She hadn't been aware of any vehicles in the vicinity other than the ones that were always there - in other words, the vehicles belonging to the local people.

With absolutely no leads, Jim went back to the truck, Blair close beside him. As he reached it -

"Detective Ellison! Is there anything you can tell us about this outrage?"

Don Haas. A vulture if ever there was one... "Sorry, no," Jim said, sounding anything but sorry. "The fire chief isn't letting anyone near, even though there isn't any obvious sign of a fire, until his department has checked out everything. Everyone living nearby was in bed and asleep. Once the police get clearance we'll examine the site as best we can, but for damage as thorough as that, I doubt we'll find anything." He unlocked the truck and swung himself into it. Blair scrambled into the passenger seat, and was still fastening his seat belt as Jim gunned the engine and drove off.

It was early to go in to the station, but there didn't seem to be much point in going home for an hour. What he did do, therefore, was stop at a 24-hour diner. "Breakfast?"

"Good idea," Blair said. Summoned by phone at four dark-o'clock as they had been, there certainly hadn't been time to eat.

They ate a leisurely breakfast, Jim paid the bill, then they went on to the PD. Rhonda was already at her desk, and Jim went over to her. She smiled up at him.

"Rhonda, would you contact Conover and make sure Veronica Sarris is still there?"

Her smile changed to a frown. "You think maybe she isn't?"

"I'm 99.9% certain that she is - I just want to check on that point one percent, make sure she's safely there." He sighed. "In spite of what she did six years ago, her father was my friend, and I do feel sort of responsible for her."

"I'll do that." She was already reaching for the phone.

Jim crossed to his desk, where Blair had already fired up the computer. "Right, Darwin, how do we word this initial report?"

Blair grinned. "Called out at 4:20 am, went to destroyed school, spoke to Principal Wyatt, Fire Chief Donahue wouldn't let anyone near the ruins, spoke to some neighbors who were all wakened by the bang, came in to the PD."

"That's _my_ kind of report. What's yours?"

"At this point, not much different, I'm afraid," Blair admitted. "Joel's comment and Alan's about at least ten bombs set to go off simultaneously is currently just supposition, and in any case belongs in Alan's report, just possible Joel's, but not ours. Until Donahue lets us check out the rubble - and I can't see him allowing access for a few more hours - that's about all we can say. A pile of stone where the school should be, Fire Department wouldn't let anyone close, nearby residents wakened by the explosion. I doubt even Haas will have more than that, even with his reporter's eye."

"Except he has the freedom to 'interpret' what he hears, and throw out some crazy supposition," Jim muttered.

Rhonda joined them. "Sarris is still safely tucked up in Conover," she said.

"Thanks, Rhonda," Jim said. As she went back to her desk, he sighed. "God knows I didn't want it to be Sarris and I'm glad it wasn't, but if she had got out, was running around loose... "

"It would give us a starting point," Blair finished.

"Yeah. As it is, we have a big fat zero. No threats sent to Wyatt - "

"Or the Mayor," Blair interrupted wryly.

"Or, presumably, any of the local papers - at least, I'd hope that if any of the papers got a 'We're going to blow up a school!' threat they'd contact the PD rather than wait and see if the threat materialized."

As Blair typed up their bare non-report, Jim turned his thoughts to the case they had been working on the previous day; it wasn't going to go away just because an empty school had been utterly destroyed.

***

Even as Blair finished their 'report' and gave it to Simon, wild speculation about the explosion and possible reasons for it was circulating in the PD. Given the circumstances, even police gossiped.

One man, however...

Sam Howton was close to retiring. His career as a detective in Burglary had been steady, occasionally inspired, and he had a reputation for never forgetting anything. Only he knew, but had never admitted, that it was more the ability to remember things if there was any sort of link, however slight, with a new case. And the current spate of talk about the explosion was triggering a memory that was fully thirty years old.

He thought about it for a few minutes, then went to see his Captain. "Can I have a word, sir?"

Bruce Roscoe nodded. He fully appreciated Howton's ability to remember things from past cases that often provided a link to a current one, and knew that he would be very sorry when Howton retired.

"It's about that school explosion, sir."

"You remember something that might help?" When Howton nodded, Roscoe went on. "It's Major Crime's case, so let's go up there now - then you'll only have to go over it once."

The two men went to Major Crime, and Roscoe paused at Rhonda's desk. "Can Captain Banks spare a few minutes?"

Rhonda picked up her phone. "Captain Banks, Captain Roscoe from Burglary would like to see you... Yes, sir." She put the phone down and nodded. "Just go straight in."

Howton followed Roscoe to Simon's office, surreptitiously glancing around the Major Crime detectives as he went. Although he knew one or two by sight, he had always had a tendency to socialize only with the members of his own department, but he instantly spotted the one he mentally identified as Detective Sandburg. Howton had never met him, although he had been a frequent visitor to the PD for four years before finally going to the Academy, but the description he had heard could only fit that one man. The man sitting beside him, sharing his desk instead of sitting at his own, had to be Ellison. Or perhaps Sandburg was sharing Ellison's desk? Whatever, they were partners, and if they were working on something where they needed to compare notes, it made sense for them to sit together; he and his partner, Tony Listarn, often did the same, though for the moment he was working alone, Tony being off work recovering from an appendectomy.

Simon looked up as the two men entered. "Hello, Bruce. What can I do for you?"

"It's more what I might be able to do for you," Roscoe said. "Or, rather, what Howton here can do. He remembers something that might help your men with that school explosion."

Simon looked at them for a moment, then went to the door. "Ellison! Sandburg!"

The two men who entered were indeed the ones Howton had assumed were Ellison and Sandburg.

"Captain Roscoe thinks he might have some information for us on the school explosion," Simon said.

Jim and Blair both turned to look at Roscoe, who grinned. "Actually, it's Detective Howton here who thinks he might know something," he said. "He's got a fantastic memory - never forgets anything - and he thinks he remembers something that might help you."

"Anything at all!" Blair said instantly.

Jim nodded agreement. "The crime seems totally pointless," he said. "So if you remember something... "

"There was a jewel heist in the late 60s," Howton said. "A huge one - even then what was stolen was worth over two million bucks. The thieves pretty well took everything from the jewelers they targeted. They were even able to break into the main safe, which was state of the art, without using explosives to bust the lock."

"One of the thieves was a locksmith?" Blair suggested.

"It's possible. Anyway, fast forward some six or seven years. The case had gone cold. Hell, it was never anything but cold - nobody was offering anything resembling the stolen jewels to any of the known fences. The assumption was that the thieves could have left Cascade, even gone abroad, and weren't looking to sell the jewels here.

"And then the school was built. When the foundations were being dug out, the builders found a big metal box, looked as if it had been deliberately buried there. It was beginning to rust and when they pulled it out of the ground, a couple of engagement-type rings fell out where the rust had left a hole in one corner." He glanced at Roscoe. "Before your time with us, sir."

Roscoe nodded. "I transferred to Cascade in '79," he told Simon.

"We soon confirmed that this was the haul from the '68 robbery. The thieves had obviously buried the jewels, possibly even left Cascade, planning on returning in a few years to dig it up, probably thinking that the stuff would be easier to sell, less easy to identify, after maybe ten years. The workmen who found it got a reward, obviously, and we managed to keep the press out of it.

"The jewels went back to the firm by way of the insurance company, but although we kept an eye on the school to see if anyone looked as if they were - well, studying it, after a couple of years we decided that the thieves weren't going to come back, maybe had realized that their heist was well and truly lost to them.

"But I'm wondering if they've come back now and decided to be revenged on Cascade for covering 'their' jewels with a huge building, so they blew it up."

"They'd be into their fifties by now," Jim said, "assuming they were in their twenties when they stole the ice."

"Not just ice," Howton said. "There were a lot of different jewels and some gold."

"Though thirty years seems a long time to wait to go back to recover their heist," Simon said.

"The field where the school was built - and the houses beside it - was a good half mile outside the Cascade boundary thirty years ago," Howton said. "If they'd moved away they wouldn't have known that the boundary on that side of the city was moving outwards very quickly. And something worth two million thirty years ago... "

"I think you really are onto something, though," Jim said. "They mightn't have planned on a thirty year delay... "

"But wouldn't they realize, when they saw the site had been built over, that the box could have been found when the school was built?" Blair asked. "And why didn't they realize that the site was being built over? In their place, even if I'd moved away, I'd have come back at least once a year to see what was happening in and around Cascade. Wouldn't it have made sense to recover the heist before, or just as soon as, the builders moved in?"

"You'd think so, wouldn't you," Roscoe said.

"There's still the revenge motive that Detective Howton suggested," Jim said. "They could have realized they wouldn't recover the heist, but they could cause Cascade hundreds of thousands of dollars to clear the site and rebuild."

"But the really weird thing is the thirty year delay... three or four years, maybe as much as ten if they were being really cautious, yes, I can see that, but thirty?" Simon repeated.

"There's one possible explanation," Blair said slowly.

"Go on."

"They moved out of Cascade, tried something similar somewhere else but were caught, and are only now out of prison."

"It's possible," Roscoe said. "Sitting in prison all these years, thinking that all they had to do was recover what was buried here and they'd be set up for life... "

"But at least one of them would have to know something - well, a fair amount - about explosives," Blair added. "Joel said at least ten devices, set to go off simultaneously, all bringing down load-bearing walls; Alan - Captain Fenton - agreed. That argues a fair experience in dealing with explosives. If they'd been in prison for the past thirty years - or even most of that time - where would they get that expertise?"

"Blair's right," Jim said. "Even if one of them knew explosives thirty years ago, he'd be totally out of practice now."

"He'd still have his basic knowledge," Roscoe protested.

"True," Jim said. "But think back thirty years. Think of something you could do back then, but haven't done since then. How good would you expect to be, trying to do it now? Especially with the developments there have been in technology over those years?"

"Well, I could still do it... "

"But clumsily," Howton said. "They're right, sir. One of the thieves has to have been in a position to work with explosives relatively recently. After all, as Ellison said - think of the changes there have been in explosives over the years."

"Okay," Simon said. "No point in setting up surveillance immediately - it'll take a week or two before work gets started on clearing the debris. And until most of the debris is cleared, they aren't going to have a hope in hell of checking to see if their box is there."

"And very difficult to pinpoint where they buried their box," Jim murmured. "Any landmarks they might have used to establish where it was will be gone, replaced by houses. Heck, even trees - even if the area hadn't been developed, any trees there would have grown, maybe one or two blown down in gales... Some, even if they were left in gardens, eventually felled."

"In other words, they might just say 'Fuck it!' and having been revenged on Cascade's authorities, move on?" Roscoe said.

"Well, they knew the position well enough to establish the approximate area - somewhere under the school," Blair said. "So once the rubble is cleared... they could slip in during the night for a few nights... "

"You could be right," Roscoe said.

And so it was agreed that there should be a discreet twenty-four hour surveillance mounted, beginning as soon as work started on clearing the rubble.

***

It was actually several weeks before the work started, the delay caused by the inevitable argument over who would pay for it, because it was a case of deliberate vandalism, not something covered by routine insurance. (Meanwhile the pupils were housed in a nearby hall. The very open-plan design of the temporary school made teaching difficult, but at least the children were still being taught locally, and not scattered throughout Cascade, housed in different schools - some of which would be a long way from their home area.)

Sam Howton was able to give Major Crime an approximate position for where the box had been found, and the team clearing the rubble was directed to start in that area, though only the CEO of the company, having been sworn to secrecy, knew why he had ordered the clearance to begin there. He was advised not to tell the men in case two of them, discussing the job, were overheard by the thieves.

Once the work started, two pairs of patrol officers in unmarked cars kept constant watch overnight. There were enough men working on clearing the rubble for it to be more than reasonably certain that the thieves would make no attempt during working hours to sneak in. Of course, while there was a heap of rubble over the site, the thieves would undoubtedly wait while that was cleared.

But the day came when the workmen had cleared the area down to the foundations of the building.

That night, surveillance was stepped up. The number of patrol officers was doubled.

Nothing happened for a couple of nights, and then a group of three men was seen approaching the site. The police reported it, then waited until it was certain that the men were headed for the cleared ground, and starting to check it. By then the men on surveillance had been joined by several more patrol officers and detectives from both Major Crime and Burglary - the original theft of the jewels was still, after all, an unsolved crime.

The three men were seriously outnumbered, and surrendered without a fight.

There was one older man, Paul Stevens, aged fifty-six - and two younger ones - his sons, Roy and Vic, both in their thirties. Roy actually worked for the demolition firm clearing the site, and he admitted having been responsible for the original explosion.

Paul - his spirit apparently totally broken by his arrest - admitted that he and his older brother Tony had stolen the jewels thirty years previously. They had decided to bury the jewels, move away and establish themselves in Seattle, then come back in perhaps five years and retrieve them. Both had married soon after moving to Seattle.

They had had a fairly... well, successful 'career' in Seattle as burglars, but Tony had been the brains behind their thefts. However, Tony and his wife and daughter had been killed in a car accident some three years after they settled in Seattle. Paul, with a wife and two sons to support, but no real knowledge of how to break and enter houses safely, had continued to do so because he had no training to do anything else, and had been caught a few months later. He had left enough clues at the sites of his previous robberies that he was given a thirty-year sentence, though he had only actually served twenty-five years.

His wife had stood by him until her death four years earlier, and although his sons both had responsible jobs, the idea of lifting a fortune buried so many years earlier, and as a result living a life of luxury without having to work, appealed to them.

It had never occurred to Paul that the box of jewels might have been found when the school was built; he was sure that all they had to do was get rid of the building then, once the rubble was shifted, recover the box.

***

They took their findings to Bev Sanchez; on consideration, she decided that Vic had actually done nothing wrong. The original theft of the jewels could be placed at Tony Stevens' door. Roy, however, was arrested for the destruction of the school, and in due course was given a five-year sentence.

When they went home after Roy Stevens' trial, Blair said quietly, "In a way, I feel sorry for Roy."

Jim nodded. "I know what you mean. He was in an almost impossible position - how could he report his father to the police? And in any case the temptation to benefit from that thirty-year-old heist... it must have been irresistible, believing that a box of jewels worth two million thirty years ago was lying there under that building."

"He could have done it anonymously," Blair said slowly, "or put the blame on his dead uncle - said they had only just discovered what Uncle Tony had done, and he felt he had to report it. If the box had still been there he could have been looking at a substantial reward."

"And as it is, he's looking forward to a spell in prison and a police record..."

"The things greed can do," Blair said sadly. He sighed. "It must have been more than frustrating for Paul, discovering that the jewels he'd thought to live off for the rest of his life were found so long ago. And even Vic - he did nothing wrong, but he too must have hoped to end up rich off his father's and brother's actions. All he had to do was help unearth the box."

Jim nodded. "Life is so much easier for the law-abiding," he said.

Blair chuckled "Though if everyone was law-abiding, we'd be out of work," he said.

"Nah - we'd find something to do with our time," Jim replied. "How about Search and Rescue? That would get us out into the countryside, plenty of exercise and fresh air, I could use my senses freely...”

"It's something to think about... once we retire from police work," Blair said thoughtfully. "We'd get a good ten years doing it before we wanted to retire completely and sit back just enjoying life."

"Yes," Jim agreed. "It's definitely something to think about."


End file.
